Penny Blood's Black Book - My Independent Guide to London » Lunch

Story

Penny Blood — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:59:05 +0000

It looks like a page out of Vogue, old mirrors piled against the wall are covered in torn out pages of photographs from fashion magazines, white painted floor boards, enormous country wooden tables and reinforced cardboard stools show how little it can take to make a place look great, it’s a wonder why so many places get it so wrong. The menu is basically pizza, it’s expensive pizza but it’s great pizza and they do a wonderful salad too. The pizza’s are so thin that they bubble up and are drizzled with olive oil and pilled with delicious and fresh ingredients. It’s really too expensive for me to come as often as I’d like but the owner is very welcoming insisting that it’s absolutely fine just to have a cup of tea. There are two large tables inviting communal sharing downstairs, which I’m a big fan of and an upstairs area which looks like a dining room in a palace with additional seating.

www.storydeli.com

Story, 3 Redchurch Street, London, E2 7DJ
07918 197 352
Monday – Sunday 12pm-10:30pm

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Secondo

Penny Blood — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:07:05 +0000

This part of Clapham has fond memories for me. Memories of the time I was sitting in my friend’s living room having a cup of tea and some whacked out junkie kicked the front door down and chased us out of the house with a giant German Shepherd and a heavy roll of recycling bags hitting me over the head with them. Nice place I’m telling you. It’s not all bad though. Secondo will certainly turn first impressions of Clapham North around. The first thing that caught my attention was the enormous cakes. Cakes so huge they look fake. And the food! Huge generous portions of salads, BBQ chicken and giant meat pies. It’s a great setting too. Housed in a railway arch, it’s part vintage shop, part cafe, part bar, with kitsch and retro furniture, an old caravan and colourful customers. It’s one of my favourite places in London despite the locals.

http://www.secondouk.com/

Secondo, 642 Voltaire Road, London, Clapham SW4 6DH
020 7720 7059
Monday – Thursday 10am-10pm; Friday – Saturday 10am-3am; Sunday 10am-8pm

Clapham Picture House

J+A Cafe

Penny Blood — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:47:54 +0000

You can trust me when I say that J+A cafe is one of my more, shall we say conservative choices, suffice to say there is nothing ‘nostalgic’, ‘weird’ or ‘themed’ about it, it’s just a nice cafe with nice decoration in a nice building with nice food and cakes that make the fat girl inside me start snorting at the pig trough. It’s tucked away up a side alley but it’s no secret. It’s a modern place attracting modern people who read newspapers whilst they eat their gourmet sandwiches and drink lattes. I can’t stop staring at the couple in the corner. She’s about 6″4 and he’s no taller than 4″6 i’m sure of it. And she’s wearing heels. I wouldn’t allow that if I was him. And they have a baby, that’s gotta be a confused set of DNA, half giant half midget. The interior design of J+A Cafe is a slightly bizarre combination of trendy Clerkenwell bistro with raw brick walls, and an office canteen with tables that look like they came from the the Chinese guy who lives below me who puts everything he finds out by the dumpster on eBay. It’s comfortable and unpretentious though.

http://jandacafe.com/

J+A Cafe, 4 Sutton Lane, London, EC1M 5PU
Monday – Friday 8am- 6pm Saturday 9pm – 5pm Sunday Closed
0207 490 2992

Buenos Aires

Penny Blood — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:46:55 +0000

I thought it about time I should pay a visit to the Greenwich Meridian. Well I can tell you there isn’t much to look at. It would have been far more exciting if there was a one hour time difference depending on what side of the line you were standing on, but no, it’s just a big park. Greenwich is an exhaustive tourist trap with nothing much to speak of really, it doesn’t really feel like it’s part of London actually. The good thing about Greenwich though is the Buenos Aires Cafe. A spacious but cosy cafe/restaurant, Buenos Aires Cafe is a great place for lunch or just a great big coffee. Run by an Argentinian/British husband and wife team they serve up the tastiest traditional and authentic food from each country. From Italian hams, French patisseries, British jams and Spanish cheese to authentic Argentinian specialities. It’s a great place to spend a couple of hours I promise you.

http://www.buenosairesltd.com/bac-green.html

Buenos Aires Cafe, 86 Royal Hill, Greenwich, London, SE10 8RT
0208 488 6764

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Spiazzo Italian Foodhall

Penny Blood — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:45:30 +0000

My favourite place in Los Angeles is a Jewish restaurant called Canters. It’s a staple in old Hollywood, full of screenwriters in big white trainers and khaki shorts writing C-list scripts about zombies (there’s a huge market for zombie films in LA). It’s bright and full of booths and the staff are older than most of the buildings.

The Italian Foodhall isn’t quite Canters but in terms of appearance it’s the closest I’ve found. Italian rather than Jewish, the deli has shelves stacked high with all that lovely Italian confectionery in amazing packaging, biscotti, amoretti biscuits, dark chocolate, marzipan sweets etc… The restaurant has high-backed red leather booths providing ample privacy and space, something you just don’t find in London since real estate prices force proprietors to pack in the customers. The food is that kind of home-cooked variety you see on American sitcoms and adverts, bruschetta piled high and bowls of olives and buttery ciabatta. The staff look Italian but that’s about it, they’re all probably from Southgate.

Spiazzo Italian Foodhall, 26 The Broadway, Crouch End, London, N8 9DE
020 83476065‎

http://www.spiazzo.co.uk

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Hookah Lounge

Penny Blood — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:45:28 +0000

A quirky little Moroccan cafe (or maybe it’s Turkish? or Lebanese perhaps? I never know the difference) on Brick Lane with tiny ornate tables, beautiful and well thought out wall hangings and elaborate chairs with hookah pipes taking up every corner. Sometimes I get a craving for that ultra sweet Turkish tea and on this occasion I couldn’t remember how to get there. This is going back a few years now when I wasn’t quite so familiar with the area, so on being given directions that went something like, “walk up the road past Nick Cave’s house, turn right, walk past the park where the pikey kids hang out waiting to mug you and steal your bike, cross the bridge of death, turn left down the alley littered with syringes and human excrement, past the cockney selling £5 plimsolls*, turn left at the end and I think that’s it.” “I’m sure there is a quicker way?” “Yeah there is but this is the only way I know from this direction”. I now realise it would have been less hazardous to take a first right and walk to the end of Cheshire Street, but then I wouldn’t have discovered the plimsoll man.

*The ONLY place to buy your plimsolls, I love this guy.

Hookah Lounge, 133 Brick Lane, London, E1 6SB
020 7033 9072
Monday – Thursday 11am-10.30pm Friday – Saturday 11.30am-12am Sunday 11am-10.30pm

Lounge Lover

La Bouche

Penny Blood — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:56:30 +0000

La Bouche is great when it’s not busy but these times are rare. The fact that it’s a deli as well as a café increases its popularity and it’s invariably overrun by pushchairs taking up what little space there is, but that is a recurring problem with Broadway Market as a whole. Problem is I really love places with furniture that looks like it’s been made of wood dug up from the bottom of a swamp in the Everglades and shelves stacked with food from small farms in Provence, and I’m a total sucker for packaging. It’s a nice spot for lunch too, with sandwiches being made to order, and the salads! Amazing salads! When I worked at the ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ around the corner getting my lunch at La Bouche was the real low point in my day due to the fact that you never quite know if the last portion of salad you have your eye on is going to go to the customer who just barged in front of you or if the sandwich you plan to order will have run out of smoked Alaskan salmon, I just don’t need this kind of stress in my day, it’s worth it though.

http://www.labouche.co.uk/

La Bouche, 49 Broadway Market, London, E8 4PH
020 7923 0600
Monday – Friday 9am-7pm Saturday 9am-5pm Sunday 10am-4pm

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The Grocery

Penny Blood — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:52:55 +0000

I’d read many a review of the Grocery café all of which condemned the service but enthused about the food. They weren’t wrong about the food, it’s amazing. And I didn’t have a problem with the service – it was fine plus I was served by a guy who looked like the freakish blond choir boy in “The Cook the Thief his Wife and her Lover”. A bit of a hideaway tucked at the back of a chi chi deli-grocery in Shoreditch with exposed brick walls, country kitchen wooden tables and notice boards advertising yoga classes and vegan cookery lessons, it still manages to be more hip than hippie (I actually spat out my coffee when I wrote that). I was inclined to hate the place, since it’s located only a stone’s throw from one of London’s poorest boroughs but has shelves stocked with 10 different kinds of glucose-free sugar, 15 different types of tofu and 18 varieties of organic granola. But the food is so good and I’d rather not give my money to Tesco.

http://www.thegroceryshop.co.uk/

The Grocery, 54-56 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DP
Monday – Sunday 8am-5pm
020 7729 6855

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Rose Bakery at the Dover Street Market

Penny Blood — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:16:34 +0000

Not so much a market as five floors of unadulterated gorgeousness. London’s answer to Opening Ceremony if you ask me. I take people here when I want to impress them with my good taste. I also like people to think I shop here. The reality is with a tshirt averaging about £400 it’s somewhat out of my price range. I like to think of this place as a museum of clothes, artefacts, shoes, accessories and a bunch of other random (very expensive) junk. It’s also the Japanese showing off (it’s owned by Comme des Garcons, Rei Kawabuko – the coolest person alive). Everything about this place is visually perfect, it’s a creative heaven and perfect for any budding stylist to come for inspiration. My favourite part however is the Rose Bakery upstairs and this is because a cup of tea and a pie is the only thing I can afford here. It’s fashion people heaven. And by that I mean people who work for Vogue and LVMH and speak French. The staff are wonderfully friendly and unpretentious though.

http://www.doverstreetmarket.com/

The Rose Bakery, 17-18 Dover Street, London, W1S 4LT
020 7518 0680
Monday – Wednesday 11am-6pm Thursday – Saturday 11am-7pm

Primrose Bakery

La Fromagerie

Penny Blood — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:10:34 +0000

La Fromagerie is so much more than just a cheese shop although what a cheese shop it is. It only has one long large wooden communal table as every other spare inch is taken up by all kinds of delicious food. They serve everything from (proper) wine to tea and coffee. It’s one of the places where you wonder what they do with all the food at the end of the day as every surface is covered with huge dishes of Halloumi, sun blushed tomatoes with toasted pine nuts, bruschetta piled high with roasted vegetables, bowls of marinated olives, pies, cakes and tortes of every kind and tiers of multi-coloured iced cupcakes and so on. Lunch was goat’s cheese and rocket on whole wheat, a slice of cherry pie and a cup of coffee, damn good food! If you ever get up this way, that pie is worth a stop.

http://www.lafromagerie.co.uk/

La Fromagerie, 2-6 Moxon Street, Marylebone, London, W1U 4EW
020 7935 0341
Monday – Friday 8am-6.30pm Saturday 9am-7pm Sunday 10am-6pm

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